Project Title: Assessment and Monitoring of Estuarine Habitat Diversity
Principal Investigator(s): Daniel R. Hanes, Stephen W. Ross

Accomplishments
Scheduled Tasks:
Collection and Preincubation of Sediments

1. Complete hardware procurement for three delivery systems
2. Complete final application software development
3. Complete system documentation
4. Fabricate and deliver three systems for reserves.
5. Conduct final field trials
6. Prepare and submit final report

Progress on Tasks

1. All hardware for the delivery systems is either in house or is on order with near-term delivery scheduled. Long lead procurement (machined components and key electronic subsystems such as the processor, display module, etc.) is complete.
2. Application software is being refined pending final delivery, primarily in the area of the user interface.
3. System technical and user documentation is in process, expected to be complete by 2002-09-06.
4. Final assembly and test of the three deliverable systems is expected to be complete for delivery and demonstration at the Masonboro reserve the week of 2002-09-09.
5. Field trials were conducted at the Wells, ME reserve in May, 2002.
6. The final report is in preparation.

Difficulties Encountered

• A decision was made to switch the design from using soldered-in flash storage to an approach which uses widely available compact-flash modules. This will allow the device storage capacity to be expanded to as much as 1 Gbyte, making it reasonable to use the system with high bandwidth sensors (e.g., ADCP, side-scan sonar, SeaBat, etc.) The associated circuit changes resulted in significant modifications to the circuit board design.
• A windowing and graphics software package was added to make the implementation of the user interface more flexible and readable. Integration of this software added significantly to the software development effort.
• Very low-level software kernel integration problems associated with the LCD driver continued to plague the software development effort for an extended period. The problems have been resolved.

Anticipated Success in Meeting Project Objectives in Scheduled Project Period
The primary project objectives (i.e., system development) have been met. Delivery of the operational systems to the reserves and final report preparation will be completed approximately two months after scheduled project completion.

Preliminary Results
Preliminary field trials were carried out in September / October, 2001 at Rookery Bay, FL and Masonboro Sound, NC. Additional field trials were conducted at the Wells, ME reserve in May, 2002. In all cases the quality of the recorded data was judged by local reserve personnel to be of good quality and of significant scientific interest. It is clear that appropriate protocols for the most effective deployment and data analysis approaches must be developed over time.

Tasks and activities for next reporting period

Tasks for the next reporting period

• Final assembly and test of deliverable systems.
• Delivery of systems to NERRs.
• Completion of final report.

Work plan to accomplish tasks

• Final fabrication is in process
• A trip by Marisys personnel to the Masonboro Sound reserve for the purpose of delivering the systems and reviewing the project is scheduled for the week of 2002-09-06.

Concerns or difficulties
No significant concerns remain.

Expenditures
No additional chargeable expenditures will be made. The project will have been completed within budget.